Easier said than done
It is hard to say where the idea for FOAK came from, it for this reason that the beginning of this company has been very organic. I didn’t just wake up one day and decide to start this business, it was an amalgamation of ideas and experience over time.
But in this post I will try and pinpoint some of the significant turning points and ‘ah-ha’ moments. I think a lot of people may see the title of this and look for key pieces of advice, but these may be hard to find. This is my experience of starting a business and everyone’s will be different. All I can say is, if you are starting a business or thinking about starting a business, then I wish you best and please ask me any questions.
Creative minds
I think I have always had a creative mind, one that is building and constructing projects in their mind, or deconstructing and reverse engineering objects you see in the wild. From around the age of 10, art and design had already become a focus of extra curricular activities. Painting, ceramics, making a lot of mixed media art, but also getting home from school and realising the Nintendo 64 had broken and taking it apart to try and fix it. But it wasn’t until after university when my attention turned to how art and design could become a business and being self-sufficient would be a career option.
Throughout my teenage years at school and after school, I dabbled a lot with pottery and woodwork. All of my projects in school, college or university would all be wood or ceramics based. But in that time I mostly made very bespoke one-off pieces that were sometimes more art than a functional product. But this always felt as if it was lacking, I needed the things I made to be used. So this is where I first thought more about making tables and tableware’s, I would make the odd table for my house that was used everyday, this was was beginning to fill that urge or void for functional products.
Having worked in a job role from a trainee to design manager with 3 years, I quickly found out that working for someone else was never going to be enough. I would never be able to achieve what I wanted and build a company my personal ethos on how it should run, so there was only one way to go.
Sparks
A childhood friend of mine was the one who introduced me into the kitchen knife manufacturing world. As he worked in a knife making factory, he was able to show me the ropes and what exactly when into creating a kitchen knife.
I learnt about different steels and their uses, how to harden and heat treat specialist steel, the types of kitchen knives that exist and what people use the most. I also learnt about the dirty and difficult processes that have been around for centuries to make a knife, the ones that have stayed the same and the ones that have modernised.
It is after making a few knives with him that the idea for FOAK began to flourish and become more of realistic idea.
Alex, I owe you a huge amount of gratitude and a few pints, thanks pal.
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